1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to wireless telecommunications, and more particularly, to a method for transmitting a registration request order message from a mobile switching center to a base station in a personal communication services (PCS) system satisfying IS-634/TSB-80 as an A-interface standard.
2. Description of the Related Art
Referring initially to FIG. 1 which illustrates a registration process in accordance with the prior art, a cellular system generally designated as 10 is shown comprising a plurality of mobile stations 100, a base station 200 for providing wireless service to the plurality of mobile stations within the service coverage area, a mobile switching center (MSC) 300 connected to the base station by a cable and a public switching telephone network (PSTN) 400 for connecting the mobile switching center 300 to wire telephone network.
Interim Standard IS-95A/B(J-STD-008) has been adopted by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) for implementing CDMA in a cellular system. The TIA/IS-95 standard is an interface standard for, inter alia, interfacing mobile stations with a base station, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The TIA/IS-95 standard defines call processing which is classified into two parts, mobile station call processing and base station call processing. A component of mobile station call processing, relevant to the present application, concerns the process of registration. Registration is the process by which the mobile station notifies the base station of its location, status, identification, slot cycle, station class, and other pertinent characteristics. The mobile station informs the base station of its location and status so that the base station can efficiently page the mobile station in accordance with the provided location and status data. The mobile station may transmit registration information either autonomously or as initiated by the base station through an order message (i.e. order registration).
An ordered registration can be ordered by a base station or by an MSC via a base station. In the first case, when a base station orders a mobile to register, the base station sends a registration request order message to a mobile station to which the mobile station responds by performing registration. In a base station ordered registration, the mobile station 100 first enters the update overhead information substate of the system access state with a registration indication within T35m=0.3 seconds after the registration request order is received. T35m is the maximum time to enter the update overhead information substate of the system access state to respond to messages received while in the mobile station idle state (except authentication messages). Then the mobile station 100 enters the registration access substate and transmits a registration message to the base station 200. In contrast, when an MSC 300 attempts to execute an ordered registration via a base station, no message protocol is defined by the A-interface standard.
Before an MSC transmits a registration request order message to the base station in order to solicit a registration response from the mobile station, the MSC must first request that the mobile station registers via the base station Currently, in the conventional A-interface standard no such message format is provided. Further, service providers have each defined their own proprietary message formats for just such use. As a result, message formats provided from the various service providers are incompatible.
Therefore, a need exists for a standardized message format for a registration request order message to be made available for use by all service providers.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a method for requesting registration of a mobile station by a mobile switching center (MSC), via a base station, by defining the format of a registration request order message sent from the MSC to the base station.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for transmitting the information necessary to register the mobile station.
In one aspect of the present invention, a method for requesting registration of a mobile station by an MSC via a base station in a mobile telecommunication system is provided wherein the base station provides communication services to corresponding mobile stations and the mobile switching center connects the base station to a public switched telephone network (PSTN). The method comprises the steps of: sending a registration request order message from the MSC via the base station to request registration of a mobile station. The registration request order message may include, inter alia, message type information for identifying messages, cell identifier list information, mobile identity information of the mobile station to be requested to register, slot cycle index information representing time slot information of the paging channel containing the message and signaling type information.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a method for requesting registration of a mobile station by a MSC via a base station comprises the steps of sending a registration request order message from the MSC to the base station, the base station extracting necessary information from the registration request order message, and requesting registration of a mobile station.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, a method for requesting registration of a mobile station by an MSC via a base station comprises the steps of: sending cell identifier list information from a mobile station to the base station, sending mobile identity information of the mobile station to which the registration request was made, to the base station; and sending slot cycle index information representing time slot information of the paging channel containing the message from the mobile station to the base station.